Crank, bicycle, and waterwheel: hands-on with the OLPC XO 3.0 tablet

One Laptop Per Child is close to releasing the XO tablet with PixelQi display …

One Laptop Per Child unveiled its XO 3.0 tablet at the Consumer Electronics Show Sunday, designed to bring the tablet experience to developing countries. The tablet sports impressive specs given its targeted price point ($100, but only sold in bulk to countries) and OLPC has made sure the device has a variety of charging methods at its disposal.

The XO tablet can run Android or its own Sugar OS on a 1024x768 PixelQi display for both indoor and outdoor reading, or a 1024x768 LCD. Internally, it has 512MB of RAM and 4GB of internal storage, as well as a USB port, microUSB port, audio in and out ports, and a power jack.

The XO 3.0 uses Marvell's ARM-based ARMADA PXA618 SoC, much like the new XO 1.75 laptop. Previous generations of OLPC hardware used x86-based AMD Geode chips that were less energy-efficient. Marvell partnered with OLPC to develop the tablet in 2010 and gave the organization a $5.6 million grant during a time when it faced serious financial difficulties.

XO tablet ports: microUSB, audio in and out, USB, and a power port

The solar cover will use the screws that hold the tablet together to provide power

And that power jack became our favorite part of the device. Not only can the device be powered by a separately purchased hand crank or solar panel (which uses externally exposed screws that hold the tablet together to transmit power), but according to Edward McNierney, chief technology officer of OLPC, the tablet can even be powered by waterwheel or bicycle with the right connections. McNierney told Ars that the tablet can handle variable voltages between 10 and 25 volts, which opens up charging to less-consistent power sources that most other tablets can’t tolerate. The hand crank takes hard-and-fast cranking to power the tablet for just a few minutes, but the 4-watt solar cover can provide two hours of power for every hour of sun exposure.

The XO tablet is a little heavy and chunky, but we expect small hands won’t mind. When we handled it, swipes and taps were fairly fluid, and McNierney showed the browser with a few pages of Wikipedia.

The OLPC's version of Wikipedia

Is it an iPad killer? Of course not. But it’s a great vector for getting the interaction and learning experience of a tablet into more hands.

OLPC's initial launch target for the XO tablet was 2010, but obviously the date has slipped, something that happens because, as McNierney said, "we're not RIM or HP." The company hopes to make the tablet available at some point this year.

What I really like is the power flexibility. Laptop and tablet manufacturers could take a clue from this. Being able to charge my device, especially when camping or when out for long trips, is at least as important as any other aspect of using it.

What really frustrates me are proprietary or delicate charging ports. Every tablet that can't charge from USB should have the same, standard coaxial power port that has been around for decades, and it should take any input from 9 volts and on up, so we don't need expensive power converters.

It really is. I don't think they realize that content and software are by far the most important component in a computing system. The best way to get software for these devices is to get the market to develop it, but as long as there are no devices in the hands of the kind of people who'd develop the software, software won't get written...

So the short version is: these need to be in retail stores. These need to be on EBay. These need to be on Amazon. Sure, sell them for $100 to the Third World, but also sell them for $250 on retail shelves, so people will actually build up a market to develop apps and prepare content to feed the developing world.

Unfortunately, the OneLaptop project is always about a year late, and $100 over budget. Datawind's $50 tablet slated for a roll-out in India is much more likely to succeed in 3rd world markets. Good article in the Wall Street Journal blog Speakeasy here.

If I had to guess, I would guess that they are so low on cash, they can't fund a production run of these in hopes of selling on the CE market, for fear of ending up with a large stock that doesn't sell.

That's a crying shame. TomXP411 is right; selling more of them would mean more content generated for them. At $200 or so and with Android onboard, these might sell pretty well in the "first world" countries. I didn't care much for the XO-1 (which I have had hands on), but this is a pretty slick little unit. I could very much see myself with one of them.

I wonder if they have considered teaming up with someone who wants to make a competitor to the Kindle Fire?

(But meh. I know they're probably sick to death of people second-guessing their plans.)

If I had to guess, I would guess that they are so low on cash, they can't fund a production run of these in hopes of selling on the CE market, for fear of ending up with a large stock that doesn't sell.

There is that, though they also don't have a fixed cost of manufacture yet. They're counting on bulk sales to the usual suspects to bring the cost down.

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That's a crying shame. TomXP411 is right; selling more of them would mean more content generated for them. At $200 or so and with Android onboard, these might sell pretty well in the "first world" countries. I didn't care much for the XO-1 (which I have had hands on), but this is a pretty slick little unit. I could very much see myself with one of them.

I wonder if they have considered teaming up with someone who wants to make a competitor to the Kindle Fire?

(But meh. I know they're probably sick to death of people second-guessing their plans.)

They aren't the most organized, coherent bunch. The XO-1 was made to support then untested educational theories. And Nicholas Negroponte tends to be big on words, low on leadership and organization.

Any word on whether they're going to release to the general public this time? I know I would love to buy one for my daughter. I don't really understand their reasoning behind this -- it seems like they could prioritize shipments to their primary target market, while still delivering to the general public.

Unfortunately, the OneLaptop project is always about a year late, and $100 over budget. Datawind's $50 tablet slated for a roll-out in India is much more likely to succeed in 3rd world markets. Good article in the Wall Street Journal blog Speakeasy here.

If I had to guess, I would guess that they are so low on cash, they can't fund a production run of these in hopes of selling on the CE market, for fear of ending up with a large stock that doesn't sell.

IMO a non-profit shouldn't take on financial risk so that it can sell toys to consumers. If the market really existed, somebody could form a company to buy in bulk from OLPC and sell and support them in the US.

The Speakeasy article about the Datawind $50 tablet has a few paragraphs on the One Laptop project. A month after distribution of the last batch of One Laptops in Cambodia, they found parents asking their children to crank them for the light they produced. Not exactly an educational use, unless you are an anthropologist learning about rural poverty in 3rd world countries. Thailand has decided to go with the Datawind product.

If they really want lots of useful content for this device, many orders of magnitude more than they could possibly create themselves, and more 'long tail' speciallized content some of which is likely to really help out the communities for which it is intended, then they need to do a general public release.

Isn't it better to have millions of people working to create content for needy communities rather than just a handful of academic types? Which group is more likely to come up with more useful software? The only way to do this is through a general release.

They need to just do it and stop playing around. Is this a real attempt at helping out or just some academic hobby?

There have been things that, for my own selfish reasons, I lazily wish they'd do differently, but I'd never characterize them the way you just did. Armchair quarterbacking is easy; getting out there and doingstuff is another story.

"The XO tablet can run Android or its own Sugar OS on a 1024x768 PixelQi display for both indoor and outdoor reading, or a 1024x768 LCD. Internally, it has 512MB of RAM"

Having tested the original OLPC, and followed the news for a while, I tend to agree that Negroponte is nuts, and that there have been some serious blunders in this project. The politics of deployment, for example, has been pretty messy.

But the hardware is the bit that keeps me interested. Notice the *OR* above? Yeesh. The PixelQi screen remains one of the strongest parts of this project (along with very low power consumption and water/dust proof-ness). Dropping the pixelqi screen makes me sad.

Also, 512MB RAM just seems silly. This is 2012. Getting this thing up to 1GB minimum seems like a sensible, cost-effective step. On one hand, it seems like android can deal with less memory. Sugar, on the other hand, is just fedora with a (very bizarre) coat of paint slapped on top. You try running Fedora with more than a terminal and tell me how that works out for you! Even calling it "Sugar OS" is a bit of a stretch: http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Sugar_on_a_Stick

okay, what's going on with the lighting in the photos? There's clear noise from low light levels - was the XO 3.0 being tested in deepest, darkest Peru to examine Negroponte's idea of dropping these bad boys into undeveloped areas by helo?

What I really like is the power flexibility. Laptop and tablet manufacturers could take a clue from this. Being able to charge my device, especially when camping or when out for long trips, is at least as important as any other aspect of using it.

What really frustrates me are proprietary or delicate charging ports. Every tablet that can't charge from USB should have the same, standard coaxial power port that has been around for decades, and it should take any input from 9 volts and on up, so we don't need expensive power converters.

How are they going to sell proprietary chargers when their device doesn't use some oddball voltage ... or better yet some patented low-level serial I/O that makes the device not charge (or otherwise misbehave) whenever it's connected to a non-licensed charger or battery?

I was positively astounded when the cell phone manufacturers (more or less) agreed upon mini- and micro-USB as a standard. Such easy margin they surrendered there on proprietary accessories (usually just not-crappy enough not to survive whatever meaningless warranty period). Apple, for some reason, has felt no such pressure to do so - and witness the coin they apparently make on accessories.

But yes, I agree - accepting an extremely wide range of DC voltages is simple to design in at almost no additional cost - same with a robust charging port. My present laptop has a barrel plug that can't be any more than 3mm in diameter and requires extreme care when handling - and it's not like it's a razor-thin device, so the benefits of such a tiny pin are likely realized by the manufacturer in reduced device lifetimes.

What I don't get is how the two screw on the side are supposed to provide a reliable electrical connection to the solar panel. Does this mean the solar panel is actually screwed on to the side? That would make positioning it for the right angle to the sun rather cumbersome, I would think that a wired connector with a plug termination would be a lot more flexible and reliable..

Or does it mean that the solar panel can only be used when the tablet isn't actively being used, and it has the lid on?

What I really like is the power flexibility. Laptop and tablet manufacturers could take a clue from this. Being able to charge my device, especially when camping or when out for long trips, is at least as important as any other aspect of using it.

What really frustrates me are proprietary or delicate charging ports. Every tablet that can't charge from USB should have the same, standard coaxial power port that has been around for decades, and it should take any input from 9 volts and on up, so we don't need expensive power converters.

How are they going to sell proprietary chargers when their device doesn't use some oddball voltage ... or better yet some patented low-level serial I/O that makes the device not charge (or otherwise misbehave) whenever it's connected to a non-licensed charger or battery?

I was positively astounded when the cell phone manufacturers (more or less) agreed upon mini- and micro-USB as a standard. Such easy margin they surrendered there on proprietary accessories (usually just not-crappy enough not to survive whatever meaningless warranty period). Apple, for some reason, has felt no such pressure to do so - and witness the coin they apparently make on accessories.

But yes, I agree - accepting an extremely wide range of DC voltages is simple to design in at almost no additional cost - same with a robust charging port. My present laptop has a barrel plug that can't be any more than 3mm in diameter and requires extreme care when handling - and it's not like it's a razor-thin device, so the benefits of such a tiny pin are likely realized by the manufacturer in reduced device lifetimes.

US manufacturers using micro USB ports for charging springs from the European Commission deciding on this standard*. OK, that's the one fact I'm bringing to the table; what follows is conjecture.

Basically, the decision was not made by industry players; it was multiple European governments deciding on the need for a power standard. It's a much worse issue over there, since having proprietary connectors would mean that a user would often need multiple, expensive adapters, e.g. if a British person wanted to visit a friend across the Channel. The manufacturers knew which way the wind was blowing -- and, with the proprietary-connector scam no longer viable in a huge market, decided they may as well cut down manufacturing costs by standardizing, which also allows them to more easily outsource the manufacture of these accessories -- and decided to implement the same standardization in the US. Apple was typically resistant and only marketed the required 30-pin-to-micro-USB adapter in Europe, but they're certainly not hard to get Stateside. (As an aside, I give Apple flak for their proprietary connector, but multiple connections from one source is a great idea, and they support high-speed charging using a more powerful current than the USB standard allows. We just need a "docking connector" standard for which Apple can begrudgingly provide an adapter.)

Any word on whether they're going to release to the general public this time? I know I would love to buy one for my daughter. I don't really understand their reasoning behind this -- it seems like they could prioritize shipments to their primary target market, while still delivering to the general public.

Giving them no resale value whatsoever (not the case if some westerners could by one in the stores) is a great way to ensure they're not stolen from the children they're destined to.

Also, managing individual customers, and returns, and warranties, is really a pain in the rear.With country-wide projects, they can ensure the local put in place all the infrastructure needed for servicing and repairs.

I would like for XO to first just focus on alternative energy solutions for portable electronics and outdoor. I'm really tired of all these cheap, made-in-china solar chargers showing up which supposedly charge iPhones and such, but you get them and they work about as well as a tick on a dog's ass. Their internal batts are cheap and don't hold a charge. The solar panels never perform according to advertised capacity. Even supposed "high quality" outdoor solar gear, like Goal0, is hit or miss.

XO seems focused on making some high-quality stuff. I wish they'd make some durable charging solutions and sell them to the common market.

Any word on whether they're going to release to the general public this time? I know I would love to buy one for my daughter. I don't really understand their reasoning behind this -- it seems like they could prioritize shipments to their primary target market, while still delivering to the general public.

Giving them no resale value whatsoever (not the case if some westerners could by one in the stores) is a great way to ensure they're not stolen from the children they're destined to.

Also, managing individual customers, and returns, and warranties, is really a pain in the rear.With country-wide projects, they can ensure the local put in place all the infrastructure needed for servicing and repairs.

I'm not sure I understand your first sentence -- are you saying that, if westerners could buy these in stores, the resale value would be increased? I think it's quite the opposite; if the product can be acquired by retail channels, there's no point trying to buy or steal them away from the intended, underprivileged children. Individual returns, warranties, etc. don't have to be an issue for the OLPC project if they only sell in bulk to retail distributors. Finally, having these tablets in retail stores would most likely mean that the retail stores -- or an ancillary market of other computer repair shops -- would be prepared to work on them for service and repairs, meaning that locals in the countries receiving donations would be able to a) learn from methods used by the large repair shops or b) return units en masse for service elsewhere, if local facilities are unavailable.

As long as they're able to produce in sufficient quantities, I see only benefits in providing these tablets to additional markets.

Any word on whether they're going to release to the general public this time? I know I would love to buy one for my daughter. I don't really understand their reasoning behind this -- it seems like they could prioritize shipments to their primary target market, while still delivering to the general public.

Giving them no resale value whatsoever (not the case if some westerners could by one in the stores) is a great way to ensure they're not stolen from the children they're destined to.

Also, managing individual customers, and returns, and warranties, is really a pain in the rear.With country-wide projects, they can ensure the local put in place all the infrastructure needed for servicing and repairs.

I'm not sure I understand your first sentence -- are you saying that, if westerners could buy these in stores, the resale value would be increased? I think it's quite the opposite; if the product can be acquired by retail channels, there's no point trying to buy or steal them away from the intended, underprivileged children.

Wrong.If you see someone here with a XO3, he's either member of the OLPC organization, or a thief. So, no resale value.If it's sold here for 250€, hundred time the daily median salary of some of the targeted countries, you will have a black market. I mean, it's literally as easy as stealing a candy from a baby. And without close examination, no way to determine if it's a legitimate model, or a stolen one (changing some plastic color is not enough to deter thieves).

XO seems focused on making some high-quality stuff. I wish they'd make some durable charging solutions and sell them to the common market.

That's a markedly different mission than the OLPC folks have embarked upon. But have a look at FreePlay Energy. After a 3-day power outage in my metro area forced me to actually use my previous crank-power radio/flashlight, I discovered how crappy it was (busted on day 2). So I did my research and replaced it with the FreePlay EyeMax, which is much much more solid and durable. I'm fairly sure my FreePlay crank-and-solar powered radio/flashlight/charger will still be working fine when I kick the bucket.

Ish. Off the top of my head, they had major headaches getting FCC (and associated agency) licensing for Wifi, testing and approval for the battery (which was, in fact, really cool LiFeP04 tech, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithium_ir ... te_battery). They tried to hit the Xmas target, and there were a bunch of more-or-less irate folks who got their units 1, 2, and 3 months late. In short, it was not a shining and unalloyed success. No idea on the numbers (i.e. $$) wrt to the overall project, though.

What is missing in the article: These devices would make it easier and cheaper for (American & European) parents to buy a computer for their children. The low price makes them 'disposable' if lost or damaged (hobbyists take note!). Keeping the pricing reasonable in a retail enviroment (~$125) would fuel the manufacturing side as well as the software developement side.OLPC will be nothing more than a pipe-dream or at best another pork-barrel 'black hole' for politicians to exploit until the things actually get to the consumers. Where are they going to get internet access in the middle of nowhere? Seriously.Is this the same bucket that was to be offered for $200 to the general public several years (decades!) ago? The idea back then was to 'sell' the things to the public at twice the cost, and use the funds to give away a laptop to some poor kid in a 3rd world country. Great idea! (if you actually offer to sell the things.)

The did finally open up the XO -1 to the public with a buy one/give one campaign. When you bought one, one was donated to a needy child. I loved mine. I learned a lot of Linux working with it and just before I gave it away to a charity needing it, I had installed an older version of the Mac OS on it! I'll buy this tablet if they offer the same program. Oh, BTW, the reason for sugar is, of course, to make it open source. With python kids can write their own programs.

OLPC was presented as a global solution for elementary education without cultural bias. The numbers say otherwise.

Not sure how you're arriving at that conclusion. OLPC distributes to third world countries via third world government bulk purchasing. It's not like they can force those governments to buy a certain amount. And in any case, why should they even try? To placate internet conspiracy theorists? That would be pretty stupid.